Do we know for a fact Apple made fewer deals like these? I don't think we do.
Apple makes a lot of deals. A lot. I'd expect them to be about even.
Apple makes a lot of deals. A lot. I'd expect them to be about even.
Google just has more types of companies in the ecosystem to make deals with. Apple’s iOS OEM deals can’t be found anticompetitive because they don’t have those deals to begin with.
Apple makes the devices, so they aren’t making others squash competition. They’re exactly what they say.
Beyond that there’s no evidence one way or another that there are any sweetheart deals. None of the public documents from the trials showed that.
Anything beyond that is speculation.
Supposedly, the 15%-after-first-year rule for subscriptions that they instituted was because they were trying to entice Netflix to continue to take in-app payment for subscriptions. Rather than a sweetheart deal, they rolled it out as a platform change.
There are areas which I think are more questionable, such as their Apple TV partnerships with Amazon and a few others.
I think Apple just did that because it was becoming clear that what they were saying wasn’t true/they were getting political pressure about charging 30% no matter what.
I don’t remember the exact timing on the change so my guess as to the cause may be wrong.